The Ocean of Theosophy by William Q. Judge,

Septenary Constitution of Man

Respecting the nature of man there are two ideas current in the religious circles
of Christendom. One is the teaching and the other the common acceptation of
it; the first is not secret, to be sure, in the Church, but it is so seldom
dwelt upon in the hearing of the laity as to be almost arcane for the ordinary
person. Nearly everyone says he has a soul and a body, and there it ends. What
the soul is, and whether it is the real person or whether it has any powers
of its own, are not inquired into, the preachers usually confining themselves
to its salvation or damnation. And by thus talking of it as something different
from oneself, the people have acquired an underlying notion that they are not
souls because the soul may be lost by them. From this has come about a tendency
to materialism causing men to pay more attention to the body than to the soul,
the latter being left to the tender mercies of the priest of the Roman Catholics,
and among dissenters the care of it is most frequently put off to the dying
day. But when the true teaching is known it will be seen that the care of the
soul, which is the Self, is a vital matter requiring attention every day, and
not to be deferred without grievous injury resulting to the whole man, both
soul and body.

The Christian teaching, supported by St. Paul, since upon him, in fact, dogmatic
Christianity rests, is that man is composed of body, soul, and spirit. This
is the threefold constitution of man, believed by the theologians but kept in
the background because its examination might result in the readoption of views
once orthodox but now heretical. For when we thus place soul between spirit
and body, we come very close to the necessity for looking into the question
of the soul's responsibility — since mere body can have no responsibility. And
in order to make the soul responsible for the acts performed, we must assume
that it has powers and functions. From this it is easy to take the position
that the soul may be rational or irrational, as the Greeks sometimes thought,
and then there is but a step to further Theosophical propositions. This threefold
scheme of the nature of man contains, in fact, the Theosophical teaching of
his sevenfold constitution, because the four other divisions missing from the
category can be found in the powers and functions of body and soul, as I shall
attempt to show later on. This conviction that man is a septenary and not merely
a duad, was held long ago and very plainly taught to every one with accompanying
demonstrations, but like other philosophical tenets it disappeared from sight,
because gradually withdrawn at the time when in the east of Europe morals were
degenerating and before materialism had gained full sway in company with scepticism,
its twin. Upon its withdrawal the present dogma of body, soul, spirit, was left
to Christendom. The reason for that concealment and its rejuvenescence in this
century is well put by Mme. H. P. Blavatsky in the SecretDoctrine.
In answer to the statement, "we cannot understand how any danger could arise
from the revelation of such a purely philosophical doctrine as the evolution
of the planetary chain," she says:

The danger was this: Doctrines such as the Planetary chain or the seven races
at once give a clue to the seven-fold nature of man, for each principle is correlated
to a plane, a planet, and a race; and the human principles are, on every plane,
correlated to seven-fold occult forces — those of the higher planes being of
tremendous occult powers, the abuse of which would cause incalculable evil to
humanity. A clue, which is, perhaps, no clue to the present generation — especially
the Westerns — protected as they are by their very blindness and ignorant materialistic
disbelief in the occult; but a clue which would, nevertheless, have been very
real in the early centuries of the Christian era, to people fully convinced
of the reality of occultism, and entering a cycle of degradation, which made
them rife [ripe] for abuse of occult powers and sorcery of the worst description.

Mr. A. P. Sinnett, at one time an official in the Government of India, first
outlined in this century the real nature of man in his book Esoteric Buddhism,
which was made up from information conveyed to him by H. P. Blavatsky directly
from the Great Lodge of Initiates to which reference has been made. And in thus
placing the old doctrine before western civilization he conferred a great benefit
on his generation and helped considerably the cause of Theosophy. His classification
was:

The Body, or Rupa.

Vitality, or Prana-Jiva.

Astral Body, or Linga-Sarira.

Animal Soul, or Kama-Rupa.

Human Soul, or Manas.

Spiritual Soul, or Buddhi.

Spirit, or Atma.

The words in italics being equivalents in the Sanskrit language adopted by him
for the English terms. This classification stands to this day for all practical
purposes, but it is capable of modification and extension. For instance, a later
arrangement which places Astral body second instead of third in the category
does not substantially alter it. It at once gives an idea of what man is, very
different from the vague description by the words "body and soul," and also
boldly challenges the materialistic conception that mind is the product of brain,
a portion of the body. No claim is made that these principles were hitherto
unknown, for they were all understood in various ways not only by the Hindus
but by many Europeans. Yet the compact presentation of the sevenfold constitution
of man in intimate connection with the septenary constitution of a chain of
globes through which the being evolves, had not been given out. The French Abbe,
Eliphas Levi, wrote about the astral realm and the astral body, but evidently
had no knowledge of the remainder of the doctrine, and while the Hindus possessed
the other terms in their language and philosophy, they did not use a septenary
classification, but depended chiefly on a fourfold one and certainly concealed
(if they knew of it) the doctrine of a chain of seven globes including our earth.
Indeed, a learned Hindu, Subba Row, now deceased, asserted that they knew of
a seven-fold classification, but that it had not been and would not be given
out.

Considering these constituents in another manner, we would say that the lower
man is a composite being, but in his real nature is a unity, or immortal being,
comprising a trinity of Spirit, Discernment, and Mind which requires four lower
mortal instruments or vehicles through which to work in matter and obtain experience
from Nature. This trinity is that called Atma-Buddhi-Manas in Sanskrit,
difficult terms to render in English. Atma is Spirit, Buddhi
is the highest power of intellection, that which discerns and judges, and
Manas is Mind. This threefold collection is the real man; and beyond
doubt the doctrine is the origin of the theological one of the trinity of Father,
Son, and Holy Ghost. The four lower instruments or vehicles are shown in this
table:

Real Man:Atma, Buddhi, Manas,

Lower Vehicles:

The Passions and Desires,

Life Principle,

Astral Body,

Physical Body.

These four lower material constituents are transitory and subject to disintegration
in themselves as well as to separation from each other. When the hour arrives
for their separation to begin, the combination can no longer be kept up, the
physical body dies, the atoms of which each of the four is composed begin to
separate from each other, and the whole collection being disjointed is no longer
fit for one as an instrument for the real man. This is what is called "death"
among us mortals, but it is not death for the real man because he is deathless,
persistent, immortal. He is therefore called the Triad, or indestructible trinity,
while they are known as the Quaternary or mortal four.

This quaternary or lower man is a product of cosmic or physical laws and substance.
It has been evolved during a lapse of ages, like any other physical thing, from
cosmic substance, and is therefore subject to physical, physiological, and psychical
laws which govern the race of man as a whole. Hence its period of possible continuance
can be calculated just as the limit of tensile strain among the metals used
in bridge building can be deduced by the engineer. Any one collection in the
form of man made up of these constituents is therefore limited in duration by
the laws of the evolutionary period in which it exists. Just now, that is generally
seventy to one hundred years, but its possible duration is longer. Thus there
are in history instances where ordinary persons have lived to be two hundred
years of age; and by a knowledge of the occult laws of nature the possible limit
of duration may be extended nearly to four hundred years.

It will be seen that the physical part of our nature is thus extended to a second
department which, though invisible to the physical eye, is nevertheless material
and subject to decay. Because people in general have been in the habit of admitting
to be real only what they can see with the physical eye, they have at last come
to suppose that the unseen is neither real nor material. But they forgot that
even on the earth plane noxious gases are invisible though real and powerfully
material, and that water may exist in the air held suspended and invisible until
conditions alter and cause its precipitation.

Let us recapitulate before going into details. The Real Man is the trinity
of Atma-Buddhi-Manas, or Spirit and Mind, and he uses certain agents
and instruments to get in touch with nature in order to know himself. These
instruments and agents are found in the lower Four — or the Quaternary — each
principle in which category is of itself an instrument for the particular experience
belonging to its own field, the body being the lowest, least important, and
most transitory of the whole series. For when we arrive at the body on the way
down from the Higher Mind, it can be shown that all of its organs are in themselves
senseless and useless when deprived of the man within. Sight, hearing, touch,
taste, and smelling do not pertain to the body but to the second unseen physical
man, the real organs for the exercise of those powers being in the Astral Body,
and those in the physical body being but the mechanical outer instruments for
making the coordination between nature and the real organs inside.